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Black Comedy

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April 2025

April 06, 2025

Naked: Life in Interesting Times

The idea goes that to say someone lives in “interesting times” is an insult or...

March 2025

March 11, 2025

Mickey 17: The Art of Literalism

I have seen three Bong Joon-ho films (Snowpiercer, Parasite, and Mickey 17). In each case,...

February 2025

February 19, 2025

Man Bites Dog: And Then What?

Some movies seek to entertain. Others have the gall to make one think. The truly...

September 2024

September 03, 2024

The Savages’ Ravages

It’s ten years since the death. Not my mother, who’s been dead longer (13 years)....

January 2024

January 22, 2024

The Big Circus at Mummy Mountain

Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951) effects a miracle. Its protagonist, Charles Tatum (Kirk...

January 10, 2024

What is This Quintessence of Dust?

Ten years ago, two friends and I holed up in a cabin in Woolwine, VA,...

July 2023

July 11, 2023

Clown Car Gladio

A recent book review asks: “There are Herzog memes, but no Fassbinder memes. Why is...

May 2023

May 19, 2023

Mankind and the American Dream

Someone remarked to me recently that Mick Foley, the ex-professional wrestler, may be among the...

April 2023

April 24, 2023

Vats and Vats of Bloody Alfredo Sauce

Jeff Baena’s Spin Me Round (2022) is a work of décollage. But of what? Romantic...

February 2023

February 21, 2023

Flesh, Suburbia, and Agent Orange

Bob Balaban. The name’s enough really. If I had seen it on a page before...

February 12, 2023

Recasting the Medieval Rom Com

Pedro Almodóvar’s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989) is not a film for today....

January 2023

January 30, 2023

Danny DeVito’s Ladykillers: A Hipster Farce

Duplex (2003) is the kind of black comedy you don’t see much these days. Streaming...

January 20, 2023

Love, Death, and Mr. Joyboy

The nigher the end, the wonkier the appetite. Whether it’s Jay and Silent Bob in...

July 2022

July 22, 2022

Murdered on the Fourth of July

A disfigured corpse sits in a burnt-out helicopter somewhere in the Kuwaiti desert. The officer...

March 2022

March 05, 2022

A Nation of Used Car Dealers, by Used Car Dealers, for Used Car Dealers

A glance at the Rotten Tomatoes reviews of Robert Zemeckis’ Used Cars (1980) about sums...